[J3] [EXTERNAL] (SC22WG5.6189) RE: [ukfortran] October meeting visa invitation letter

[Reuben D. Budiardja]

On 04/29/2020 11:34 AM, Clune, Thomas L. (GSFC-6101) via J3 wrote:
> Hi Bill,
> 
> I think it is way too late for J3 to reinvent tools for collaborative development of documents.  Several excellent and free options are available:  GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab, …     I am fine with the J3 site being a portal.
> 
> I doubt anyone on this list is wed to GitHub, if the MS ownership is truly a concern.  (Thus far there seem to be no ill effects, and MS stated reasoning for the acquisition to facilitate improved scalability for large projects appears to hold true.   I’ve seen no adds nor elimination of desirable features.)   And to compare MS to nuclear weapons is a bit of a stretch in any event.      Using one of the alternative platforms should be just fine for our purposes.   GitHub is merely the most common hosting service and thus the most familiar to a large segment of our community.
> 
> I don’t mean to make assumptions, but your message suggests  that you’ve not experienced collaborative development within something like GitHub    There is a synergy that is hard to do justice by listing the features.

It seems to me that Bill's main concern is that it's not something that 
J3 control, which is something that I could relate as well. Adopting one 
of the already available tools like GitLab but owned and run by J3 would 
be a potential solution.

Again, it does not have to be a complete replacement of everything. 
Multiple communities can co-exist on different platforms which can be 
represented by different folks in the committee.

Best,
Reuben